I remember growing up with the earlier Search engine and then Google game along.

Google had massive selling points at the time: a clean interface that was quick to load (remember it was dial up era for most people!), unobtrusive text ads (most engines were filled with images pop ups and pop unders like the worst ad filled sites of today without ad blockers) and the key was tge search results were good. Pretty much ever search, you’d find something useful on the first page if not the first result. It was SO much easier than the other engines where you had trawl hard and keep changing your search terms.

Google made search easy and unobtrusive. I used to use AltaVista, Lycos, Yahoo and AskJeeves before google. Once google arrived I literally just used google - I didnt need to use 3 or 4 engines to get what I wanted.

The other search portals tried the trick of bundling email and chat clients and news etc. Google was just search, and then eventually an unobtrusive news tab. And when gmail launched email, they promised 1GB storage for free and forever increasing in size, with a clean interface.

Google won because they offered people what they wanted, without the in your face ads. And they really got in the background that the user is the product and monetized all our data - without us realising.

And they used their success to establish dominance, buying ad providers, veonf aggressive in selling ads, and crucially being successful in click throughs. People ignore colourful picture ads, theyre just annoying, but they click through sponsored search results.

Others have tried to copy the formula - look at Bing - but its hard to displace an encumbant. And the old guard like Yahoo and Lycos etc didnt adapt fast enough, or made huge mistakes in using google search themselves and just trying to be portals. People cut out those middle men fast.

Yeah I only use windows at work now, ditched it at home. The start menu takes over a minute to open, and then when it does it ignores clicks for another minute.

Then whenever I want to run outlook I have to search because the start menu doesnt let me set favourites. And I have to wait when I type in Outlook because the first search brings the crappy built in version of outlook (which I have clicked on more than once to be immensely frustrated to see it open) and then wait until “Outlook (classic)” appears and click that.

I discovered some of my less technically able colleagues gave up on Outlook because they assumed it wasn’t installed and use the web interface instead. And that is just one of numerous daily frustrations I get with Windows.

Honestly, Windows is now a big steaming pile of crap. All my home devices are on Linux, and I only use Windows at work because I have no choice.

Just to say, its minimal effort to set up. Its the kind of annoyance ypu get scratching an itch - a momentary effort for long term relief.

I really dont understand how the copyright laws can be so aggressive as to pursue individuals downloading songs or movies, but totally ineffectual against companies stealing huge volumes of data from all over the place, and repackaging it in LLMs etc. So bizarre.

Well Gavin Newsome effectively saying he wouldn’t run against Kamala sounds like theyre trying to stitch up the primaries with 1 candidste.

Its like they’ve learnt nothing from Hilary Clinton, Joe Biden or Kamala Harris. They also learnt nothing from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama - both candidates that emerged as outside chances from a more open primary process. Stiching up the last few primaries has been disaster after disaster for the Democrats. Even Bidens win may have been at the expense of a younger candidate that may have more effectively beaten Trump and prevented 2.0.

Yet in London, power lines are buried, alongside gas and water supplies and most of the telephony network.

Its a choice about what cost is acxeptable for the long term benefits of protection from the elements and safety generally. It costs more upfront, but extends the lifespan of cables as theyre protected from temperatures, UV, fainfall, and falling tree branches.

When they do need repair / replacement it requires digging but theyre generally subsurface, and many utilities are under pavements or to one side of the road, allowing roads to be kept partially open. But they generally require repair less frequently than exposed cabling.

Thats not true - underground cabling has a longer lifespan as they’re protected from rainfall, surface temperatures and UV. Tree roots and flooding is a factor of maintenance and location. E.g. an inner city location is unlikely to experience flooding and roots can be guided away from cables as they follow path of least resistance.

In much of Europe, buried cables is the norm, and they co-locate with buried gas and water supplies. Telephone cables were the one exception but with fibre optic cables even that is largely underground now especially in dense urban areas.

Old copper telephone lines werent buried for convenience as they were easy to install out to new properties as and when needed. Every house needed water and electricity but telephone connections varied, and some buildings needed multiple. But this was just from pole to home. The poles connected to cabinets on a street and the rest of the network of trunks were buried, at least in much of Europe.

It does cost more initially but with the benefit of lower cost in maintenance long term.

In Japan cables are often above ground, but presumably because of Earthquake risk. In the US I dont know why buried cables is less common. Possibly because many utilities were private and so went for short term cheaper costs? Most European utilities were public owned - and even if now privatised, the expectation remains burying.

Yes it can be repaired and replaced to varying extents. The core problem with cartilage is its blood supply makes grafts and localised repairs difficult - but not impossible and there are new techniques being developed constantly at the moment.

The other option is a total knee replacement or even a partial knee replacement. That is basically replacing the articular surfaces with synthetic surfaces in the whole knee or one compartment.

Silicone injections doesnt make sense for this joint - its generally not so much a lubrication issue (the knee has its own lubricanta) and more an issue of pain from the carrilage or bone grinding on bone. Silicone would not gove a lasting benefit - the surface needs repairing.

Knee replacements work well, especially in younger people. Pain relief is a given and aim for this, the real issue is how much function is wanted and achieved The difficult end is restoring function for athletes. If the expectation is pain free walking or climbing stairs that is very achievable. Running and sports is doable but more difficult and a big part of all of it is the post op physiotherapy, and compliance & motivaton by the person having the op to do the work needed.

The other issue of course is cost. Its expensive and even in “free” healthcare systems there is usually a mininum threshold of pain or dysfunction that needs to be met before theyll pay for it.

I think of it like this: common knowledge is representative of the knowledge of the average voter. Then look at the average voter anyhere. Thats pretty good motivation for me at least to always find out for myself.

Spoiler: usually both the strangers on the internet are wrong.

The XP device is a major security risk because its got known security vulnerabilities that are not patched and actively targetted. Its targetted because hackefs know there are bad businesses and users still running xp.

The issue is less your firewall and instead your whole network. If XP has internet access and is on your home network, it gives hackers and malware a route through to your other devices.

If you want to connect XP to the internet then there are two realistic options.

One is give the XP machine its own isolated network alongside your home network - a VLAN (virtual local area network) - i.e. a second physical network if your router supports it. One easy way of doing that is to see if your router has a Guest Wifi set up, and if so ensure that is configured to be entirely separate from your main network. But this is still risky because if you dont know what youre doing you could accidentally leave your network exposed. Also if you already use the guest network - for guests for example - then you’ll put those devices at risk, and should make a whole dedocated vlan instead.

The other option is get a second router, create a wifi with that (or ethernet connection ideally) and connect that router to the internet via an always on VPN (virtual private network). The second router and network would completely physically isolates the XP machine from your home network, even though it needs to connect through your first router to reach fhe internet. The VPN is key there, but if you dont want to use a VPN you could also isolate the second in a VLAN on your main router. This is similar to option one but would allow a totally separate dedicated wifi connection without losing your guest wifi or compromising your home wifi.

The XP machine itself will always be vulnerable whatever you do. Obviously configure a firewall and antivirus on it, and be safe in how you use it, to minimize the risk.

Whatever you do, do not connect rhe XP machine directly to your home network if you’re giving it access out onto the internet.

Edit: I may have misubderstood the question. If the device is not being allowed internet access at all, its safe to be on your network as long as you are careful what you load onto it. Malware on the XP device would still have access to your network. But yes if its contained behind your firewall and locked in, its not a problem in itself. I’d question why it needs to be on the network at all if you’re not giving it internet access though.

They will never learn because they make Windows for Microsoft not for users. They do whatever suits them and they think will maximises profitability and their share price. They have to keep “growing” so they have to find new ways to make money.

As for the article; what shill bullshit is this?

It probably makes sense for a lot of users to have their default browser of choice open automatically at login, as most people spend the majority of their time in a web browser. Windows already automatically preloads Edge in the background by default to increase its startup performance, so it’s not a huge leap to automatically display the app itself if Windows knows you’re going to open it anyway.

No, it does not make sense to do this. Apps can be set to auto launch if users want them to. This only makes sense from the perspective of Microsoft trying to push Edge onto user so it can grow it’s market share and harvest even more data.

Yeah, could also have two Pi-Hole instances. One is network wide and block ads for everyone, and the other is the DNS the kids PCs use, set with a white list of approved sites only. You can set Pi-hole to block everything (set * as the a RegEx filter) and then add domains to the white list to be allowed through.

Groups is probably more efficient but two instances could be offer more options/nuance on how you run things.

Out of interest, which aspect don’t you believe? The article is clear the broken update effects a specific subset of enterprise users, on a specific mix of base versions and cumulative updates.

This seems like a classic windows update issue. In fairness to Microsoft it is difficult to prevent bugs when there is a huge install base, with a huge range of hardware, with a huge range of users on different mixes of updates and updating at their own. I personally think that’s totally believable.

What’s not clear is perhaps the implied overarching story that W11 is worse for this than other versions of Windows. I can’t answer that about windows updates themselves, but I certainly believe W11 is the worst version of Windows I’ve ever used (and I’ve used every version back to 3.11 as a kid). I have to use W11 at work: the UI is absolutely terrible and unfriendly but far worse it constantly and inexplicably slows down, programs become unresponsive repeatedly and I come across errors constantly.

I work in a big organisation and I don’t even bother to report most errors now - we hop between PCs because of the nature of my Job, and I’ve come up across so many I just can’t be bothered opening more tickets. I’d describe it as a mostly large volume of minor issues and inconveniences that cumulatively, on top of the bad design, that make it a shit experience. But I’ve also had numerous major errors since we moved from W10 to W11 on different PCs - they all have the same hardware and software yet the problems are different on each. I’ve given up reporting the problems and just avoid the PCs, and I think a lot of my colleagues are the same.

My organisation (I work in a large Hospital), is already stretched due to high work volume and low staffing and we now have a constantly little drag from Windows 11 on everything we do. It’s like Microsoft sprinkle a little bit of shit onto every computer, every day, all day. The cumulative effect in just my organisation must be massive - I shudder to think how bad it is across the whole economy.

The publicity will have little impact; only the AI bubble popping will make them change course. But the damage is already done - they’ve pivoted their company to AI, forced it into all there products and force their employees to use it. Once the bubble pops that’s going to take time to undo and fix.

AI of course will still be a thing, but at the moment they’re wasting billions on it as everyone wants to be to AI as Google is to search.

Scarcity manufactured by the AI “boom”. When the AI bubble pops, expect a huge slump in hardware prices as companies try to offload huge stockpiles of worthless RAM, CPUs and GPUs.

The headline doesn’t quite reflect the situation, but it is difficult to capture in a headline.

Essentially add “for now”. Many of the issues are fixable but not necessarily by one laptop maker. As the article said by the time the issues were likely resolved the laptop would be obsolete as the version 2 of the chip would release.

Having said that, it’s not clear how fast the issues will resolve as without any devices there won’t be impetus to put fixes in to different parts of the ecosystem to get the full potential of the chipset.

The GPU sounds like the most serious problem and without manufacturer engagement may be the longest to get fixed.

Yes it’s fairly simple to do, essentially the user needs to download an image of a Linux install disc, flash it onto a USB stick (or a Dvd I guess), and then reboot their PC. They may need to press a key at boot to open the boot menu and select the USB (or the bios to change the boot order).

After that, most distros offer a very easy to follow installer which will install the new OS.

Most Linux installs can be done alongside windows (on the same hard drive or it’s own drive) but windows tends to break the boot loader with updates. It’s gernallt better to only dual boot if you’re good at fixing things - otherwise a full Linux install is better.

The most inportant thing is back up all your important data, and only do this if you genuinely want to leave windows. I’d make sure your windows license is digital before doing this too as that allows using windows again if you want to go back.

I’d say anyone can use Linux, it’s user friendly and robust. In terms of installing Linux, I’d only do it if you are sure you know what you’re doing - installing any OS - including windows - can involved trouble shooting problems.

He was a blackmailer and the key to blackmail is meticulous records and evidence to use against people. Question is where is it? Do the government have it? Has it been destroyed?

Seems to be a fair amount of evidence the US government does have and is being drip fed out.

For me it seems to be when you go through to download the windows binary, you get an iframe on the page containing another site. That has ads and serves up the download. So I’m guessing the ads are on the website that provides videolan with hosting for its binaries?

They are old fashioned intrusive ads pretending you need to click then to start your download. But the download starts already.

Interesting question, I’d imagine that one major limit would be the number of cores your CPU has available. Once you got to more VMs than cores, I’d guess things would quickly grind to a halt?

But I wonder if you could even anywhere near to that point as on searching only L2 VM is mentioned on various sites and that is with warnings of severe performance limitations and for development testing only. While L3 might work the problems may get too bad you can’t practically go beyond that level?